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While most home care providers struggle to find caregivers, Family Resource Home Care CEO Jeff Wiberg tells a much different story.
At the Home Care Innovation Forum, Wiberg shared how his organization transformed its recruitment process, turning a persistent challenge on its head.
"Everybody talks about how hard it is to find employees, and I just kind of shrink down in my seat because it's not true for us," Wiberg said. "But it hasn't been without an incredible amount of effort."
The Journey to Transformation
The hard work of reimagining recruitment efforts paid off – as his company instituted a comprehensive strategy where no assumption was left unchallenged. They recognized that traditional recruiting methods weren't going to solve modern hiring challenges.
The company bucked the industry narrative that finding caregivers was an insurmountable, perpetual problem. They set ambitious goals and backed them with significant resources.
In August 2021, facing declining application numbers during the Great Resignation, the company took a bold step: They invested $1 million – no small change for a $30 million company – to reimagine their caregiver recruitment process completely.
"We had to challenge every assumption about what this process should look like," Wiberg said. "We threw everything out onto the table and rethought everything."
Revolutionary Changes
The company made several radical departures from traditional hiring practices. For example, they stopped asking for job history on applications and instead focused on values-based questions like: "Why do you want to be a caregiver?"
This simple change proved to be a better predictor of success than an applicant’s previous experience.
The company streamlined the application process to just five questions, recognizing that lengthy applications were causing potential candidates to drop out. They also eliminated multiple interviews, empowering recruiters to make immediate hiring decisions – with the caveat that their incentives were tied to 90-day retention rates.
The Impact
The results were remarkable. The company went from receiving 40 applications per week to over 1,500, with a peak of 2,000 in a single week in December 2023. Their recruiter efficiency ratio also jumped significantly, far outpacing industry benchmarks.
Most impressively, they reduced their application-to-first-shift timeline from 14 days to just 1-3 days.
Here are some of Wiberg’s Keys to Success:
- Utilize data tracking and analysis in every step of the recruitment process
- Create targeted messaging for different caregiver personas
- Use employee testimonials in regular social media content
- Highlight career progression opportunities within your organization
The impact has been transformative. Family Resource Home Care has tripled its caregiver roster since implementing these changes, growing from 1,240 employees to over 3,000.
"We no longer have a recruitment challenge," Wiberg said. "It's no longer the inhibitor for our growth. We want the entire industry to be able to say, ‘We don't have a recruiting challenge because we are a phenomenal destination employer.’"
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